As the TV and game started coming together, did the evolution of one affect the other, or did the concepts and characters evolve together? For example, did assets and character ideas for the TV show affect the game, or vice versa, or did they just sort of happen?
All the species were planned and modelled before the TV show got underway, and the stars of the show were picked from a list of the team’s favourite Pinatas. Since that point, there have been a lot of benefits from the two projects evolving side-by-side. Once the creative types at Rare and 4Kids started babbling to each other, all kinds of ideas emerging from the TV side started to find their way into the game, and vice versa.

How involved has Rare been in the TV side of things? It’s got to be a learning experience for the team.
We supplied them with a huge amount of information about the Pinata world and let them do what they do best. They have some great scriptwriters, and mainly what we do is just review their work and comment on consistency issues. Bardel in Canada are handling the animation, and their work rate is amazing. There are also a lot of parallels between the modelling being done by the Rare and Bardel teams, so the models you see in the show are pretty much the same as those in the game, although there are a few key differences such as the TV show characters needing to do fancy things like speak.

Going the way of a TV series is a significant departure for a videogame developer. With that in mind, has Rare taken any inspiration from Oddworld Inhabitants’ move out of the game-development industry and into different media? Have you talked with them at all? How do you feel about this “evolution”?
No, we haven’t spoken to them. It’s not really the same thing at all – we’re still 100 percent game developers. We may have gotten involved in the creation of a TV show by association, but our expertise has always been games. Games allow a freedom of choice and sense of adventure during the creative process that would be hard to match elsewhere.

As a follow-up to that, if the TV series takes off, do you envision Rare spending more time on Viva Pinata TV shows, and perhaps even new TV programs, than it will on traditional stand-alone game IPs?
[Again, we’re 100 percent game developers.] If the TV show takes off, our involvement is likely to remain much the same, although we would be keen for the show to explore more of the Pinata world (much as we’d do ourselves if we made another game). Creating an original IP from scratch is probably the most rewarding, and frustrating, thing you can do in this business. I think we’d stagnate if we kept doing the same thing for too long.